Ghost Rider: The Game

by: The Ryan 1 year, 6 months, 4 days, 16 hours, 59 minutes ago

Release Date:

2/13/07

Price:

$30

Company:

2K Games

 

I saw the movie which was cool. I couldn’t wait to play the game. I purposely put off playing until after I saw the movie. I know that a lot of comic book series make horrible video games but that didn’t phase me at all. Until I played through the first couple levels.

First off, the ambience in the levels I think is great. There’s always interesting actions going on in the background of the level. I thought that was a nice touch. The overall construction of the levels held nothing special. It literally walks you from room to room, battle to battle until the level ends. Not much level variety going on here.

The look of the characters look pretty basic. Maybe I’ve just gotten spoiled on next-gen graphics though. Ghost Rider himself looks better than his foes around him. The flames coming off of his skull look pretty natural and they got all of the small details in too. If you’re just walking around you can always see the chain around his shoulder, and the spikes coming out of his jacket and so on. His Chopper is pretty good looking to when it’s in motion. The flames coming off of the tires and all the metallic look of the frame come off very well.

Now as far as the gameplay in God of… I mean Ghost Rider is where this package goes really wrong. 2K games was obviously leaning toward a God of War type of fighting mechanic. With the control scheme the way it is, it does match pretty closely together. However when you swing your chain it’s not as fluid as the Blades of Chaos in the God of War series. When you throw out an attack it seems to almost stick you to the floor so you can’t lay down too great of a combo, but you can always get a few hit combo pretty easily. The camera is hardly forgiving, especially during boss battles. It’s 2007 guys, we shouldn’t be throwing out attacks toward the TV screen because the camera is looking at us head on while we’re fighting an “invisible” monster. Clicking the right thumbstick will center the camera back into position behind you, but your constantly running around and dodging so it doesn’t help for too long.

In between some levels you’ll take Ghost Rider’s chopper for a ride. This party of the game was the most fun to me. You can really sense some speed when you’re riding down the tracks toward enemies and obstacles. The enemies in this portion of the game aren’t too much of a hazard as long as you lay on the attack button. The real hazard is with the obstacles that you can jump over and slide under. At the push of a button you can lay the bike down and slide underneath a truck or sign of some sort. If you hit one of the obstacles on the course there’s no sense of penalty. You’ll go back to a checkpoint location and just try and try again. This is one part they didn’t include into the walking around levels. If you are to die, even at a boss, you go all the way back to the beginning which gets real frustrating real fast. The Chopper levels do feel like a way to break up the action in the game, but they just may be your favorite part too.

Like I said, I was really excited to finally sit down with this game. But it got way to repetitive way too fast. The attempt to mimic God of War is an utter failure. If you’re going to play this game, just give it a rent. It’s worth looking at and many people (judging by message boards) like the game. Whether it’s worth a purchase at $30 is real questionable though. If it was normal priced at $50 bucks, that answer would be a no brainer.